Toni Morrison Writes For Chipotle & We’re Like, Has It Come To This?

Chipotle is using something other than overstuffed burritos and chips and gauc to get our attention. They are now using their words.

The Mexican-food-in-a-flash restaurant has tapped legendary author, Toni Morrison to write for them. Yes, you read that correctly. The celebrated author is a part of Chipotle’s new author series “Cultivated Thought” that features original short stories by prominent writers on its cups and bags. Now your burritos come with a side of George Saunders, Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell – who also join Morrison in the campaign.

The short stories are the brainchild offellow author, Jonathan Safran Foer, whocame up with the idea and pitched it to Chipotle CEO, Steve Ellis. “I selected the writers, and insofar as there was any editing, I did it,” Foer told “Vanity Fair.” “I tried to put together a somewhat eclectic group, in terms of styles. I wanted some that were essayistic, some fiction, some things that were funny and somewhat thought-provoking.”

The entire campaign is thought-provoking. It reminds me of the interesting facts on the inside of a Snapple top, except instead of learning something new, you get an entertaining short story. Check out Toni Morrison’s below:

Two-Minute Seduction

By Toni Morrison

I took my heart out and gave it to a writer made heartless by fame, someone who needed it to pump blood into veins desiccated by the suck and roar of crowds slobbering or poisoning or licking up the red froth they mistake for happiness because happiness looks just like a heart painted on a valentine cup or tattooed on an arm that has never held a victim or comforted a hurt friend. I took it out and the space it left in my chest was sutured tight like the skin of a drum.

As my own pulse failed, I fell along with a soft shower of rain typical in this place.

Lying there, collapsed under trees bordering the mansion of the famous one I saw a butterfly broken by the slam of a single raindrop on its wings fold and flutter as it hit a pool of water still fighting for the lift that is its nature. I closed my eyes expecting to dissolve into stars or lava or a brutal sequoia when the famous writer appeared and leaned down over me. Lifting my head he put his lips on mine and breathed into my mouth one word and then another, and another, words upon words then numbers, then notes. I swallowed it all while my mind filled with language, measure, music, knowledge.

These gifts from the famous writer were so seductive, so all encompassing they seemed to make a heart irrelevant.

Wow, so beautiful! Doesn’t necessarily increase my craving for a taco, but I guess I’m not the type that needs fancy words to order a steak burrito bowl in the first place. I mean, I do want a taco, but it’s not because of Toni Morrison’s flawless story, it’s because I’ve typed the word, “Chipotle” at least five different times now.